The OEC PRO Tariff Simulator

The OEC PRO Tariff Simulator is built on a new model that allows you to explore complex scenarios with multiple rules. For example, you can simulate the Liberation Day (April 2nd) scenario, which includes new tariffs between the United States and various countries, or modify these scenarios by adding your own custom rules.

Like our previous tariff simulator, it features a simple user interface based on three visualizations. To run a simulation, users need to:

1. Select a scenario.

2. Select any additional custom rules (which can be added on top of an existing scenario).

3. Run the simulation.

1. Select an importer country.
This shows the overall forecast for that country’s expected future imports.

2. Select two exporter countries.
This displays their expected exports to the selected importer.

For example, selecting the United States as the importer and China and Mexico as the exporters will display the forecasted imports of the United States by country, as well as the exports of China and Mexico to the United States by product.

- Difference among forecasts
Compares a scenario with what the model would expect if no new tariffs were introduced (e.g., assuming everything remains the same as of January 1, 2025).

- Scenario compared to a recent average
Compares the scenario forecast with a recent average (2019–2022).

- No extra tariffs
Shows what the forecast would predict in the absence of the tariffs in the scenario.

- No extra tariffs
Shows what the forecast would predict in the absence of the tariffs in the scenario.

The OEC Tariff Simulator uses an expanded and revised version of the bilateral relatedness model developed by Jun et al. (2020). This is an extended gravity model that combines information on the current exports and imports by country and product, the distance between countries, their GDPs and populations, measures of cultural and geographic similarity (e.g. common language, shared borders), and measures of relatedness which capture spillovers among geographic neighbors and related products.

Our current implementation of the OEC tariff simulator is based on a model that explains more than 83% of the variance in future bilateral trade. This added accuracy (Jun et al. (2020) model explains only about 50% of the variance in future bilateral trade), comes from several improvements, including the use of a Poisson Pseudo Likelihood estimator, spinning functions for the impact of tariffs, and from independently estimating coefficients for HS product sections (e.g. different coefficients for garments, agricultural products, machinery, etc.). We estimated the model using millions of bilateral trade records going back one decade and validated the robustness of our coefficients by checking their stability across models trained using data from different time periods.

You are free to use the OEC tariff simulator estimates, screenshots, and images following three conditions.

- If you plan to publish a post, article, or note on the web, we request you please mention the Observatory of Economic Complexity (or OEC.world) as a source of your estimates and link back to us (either to the homepage or to the tariff simulator page).

- If you plan to publish an academic article, whether it is in a working paper series, a peer-reviewed journal, or a pre-print repository such as the arxiv, we ask that you please cite us as:

The OEC Tariff Simulator. Viktor Stojkoski, Pablo Paladino, Jelmy Hermosilla, and César A. Hidalgo. URL (2025)

- If you plan to publish a social media post (on X, LinkedIn, Instagram, etc), please mention that the source is OEC.world.

Reach out to us. We understand that there is much more to tariff impact than what our current online tool can do (e.g. simulating the simultaneous impact of added tariffs in multiple countries). The OEC team is ready to help you with your analytic needs. You can reach out to us at: support@oec.world

By simulating the impact of tariffs, the OEC tariff simulator allows users to explore different policy scenarios in an intuitive manner. We invite you to explore, imagine, and strategize with this new feature at the OEC. Go To PRO Tariff Simulator